I am a lover of facts. Even if I don’t like the facts, I like knowing them because they are the truth. I am no denier of a public health crisis, the safety of vaccines, US election results, or of where a certain US president was born. One thing I have found myself to be denying recently is the season of the year in which we all find ourselves: Fall. I have caught myself denying that summer is gone. It doesn’t make it true, but I’ll be stubborn about staying in my denial for as long as I want. If I turn up the heater to its highest temperature, being warm in shorts is not a problem. I can easily spend time denying summer is truly gone—as long as I don’t look outside or go outside. But I am fully aware of the fact that my denial of Fall is my own fake denial. There’s reality, and then there’s the reality of my pretending. Reality and pretending: folks, they are two very different things. I’m still festively attired for Christmas, but my Tie o’ the Day tells you what I’d prefer to be shoveling. Please note my socks are labeled: Sock 1 and Sock 2. 🏖
Banned Books I’m re-reading today: Lorraine Hansberry’s play, A RAISIN IN THE SUN, and Maya Angelou’s novel, I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS. I give ’em each a thumbs-up, just like I did when I first read them in the DHS library when I was in 7th grade. However, I do want to make one general statement about I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS. I think we should worry less about banning this book, in which a child is raped—and has to deal with the awful aftermath of the rape. I think our time would be better spent educating our sons about how rape is always wrong, and about how rape not only causes physical damage to a girl’s/woman’s body, it can maim—and even kill—parts of a woman’s soul. We can make it clear to all the men in our lives that rape is unacceptable. Rape is what we should try to ban. If rape were not such a common atrocity for girls/women in real life, it wouldn’t be represented so often in the stories written about women—fact and fiction. And BTW, guys: there is no “joke” about rape that is funny. Personally, I grew tired of those jokes the first time I heard one.